‘After Valegro I had this feeling everyone thought that was the end of me’
Olympic champion Charlotte Dujardin wants to prove she is not a one-horse woman
When she competes at the Royal Windsor Horse Show this week, the champion dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin will have a point to prove. After the retirement of Valegro, the horse with whom she won three Olympic golds, she is keen to show once and for all that she is not a onehorse woman.
“That’s absolutely my motivation,” she says, after a morning ride at the Gloucestershire yard owned by her mentor, Carl Hester, where she has been based throughout her dazzling career. “I want to do it again not just on one but on a number of horses. I don’t want to be known just for what I did with Valegro.”
Mind, what she did with Valegro was pretty remarkable. Unbeaten in individual competition since January 2012, the horse gave his last competitive performance in December 2016. These days, he enjoys a pampered retirement in Hester’s yard. Such was the gelding’s astonishing level of achievement – with him, Dujardin broke records almost every time they competed – it has created a daunting precedent.
“After Valegro I had this feeling everyone thought that was the end of me,” says Dujardin. “Of course, he was amazing, but having trained him, now coming out with a new one, what I’m hoping is everyone will see I’m not just someone who trained just the one horse.”
Since the horse retired, Dujardin has spent the past year avoiding international competition. “I felt like the five years I had riding Valegro were very intense, the expectation on me to deliver became enormous,” she says. “I’ve described this last year as a gap year. But it wasn’t a year off: I had 10 horses here getting ready and I did the odd show in this country. But, mentally, it was very refreshing to have less pressure. If anything, it has made me more ambitious.”
After trying out a horse called Gio (which she nicknamed Pumpkin because of its rounded orange hind quarters) this year, she gave a competitive debut to a nine-year-old mare called Mount St John Freestyle. Or, as she calls her, Freebie. On their first ride out together, Dujardin scored 81 per cent, which, according to Hester, is an eye-openingly high score for a debutant horse.
“I was just hoping for a good clear round, to get 81 per cent, well, you couldn’t ask for any more,” she says. “What she can do is pretty phenomenal. The minute I started to train her and found more gears on her, I knew she was good. It was something I could feel more than others could see. But now she has come on so much you can see what she is capable of.”
Working on specific patterns and movements for 45 minutes
‘I’ve described this last year as a gap year. But it wasn’t a year off: I had 10 horses getting ready’
every day in the yard’s indoor parade ring, Dujardin has found the horse has an enormous appetite for instruction.
“If you look at her normal paces, they’re nothing special,” she says. “But when I started riding her, I felt her trainability was so good.
“Some people in our sport don’t like mares. They think they’re sensitive and opinionated. Most people go for geldings because they’re easier minded. And yes, mares can be tricky in season. But I’ve got eight mares under instruction and I find all of them really good to work with.”
Dujardin is convinced this is the one who has the potential to become another Valegro-style serial achiever. “I think she’s got another 80 per cent in her, definitely,” she says. “At Windsor, it’s going to be really exciting. But we have to be careful. We are only scheduled to do three competitions this season, just to see how it goes. She’s only nine, we don’t want to overdo it.”
Indeed, Dujardin is anxious to ensure the horse does not experience any burnout before her most critical appointment: Tokyo 2020 where she will be going for an unprecedented third Olympic individual title.
“It’s scary where time goes,” she says. “It really is only two years away and each competition keeps coming faster and faster. Physically for the horses, it’s so demanding. And, mentally, they have to cope. So you have to be so careful.”
She is, though, convinced that fans at Windsor will see the early stages of another champion pairing. “For sure, she’s capable of an Olympic medal. She’s very talented, she does super stuff, she’s very reliable.”
Until Tokyo, Dujardin would rather no one asks her the question that was posed at the end of this interview: so, how does Freebie compare to the great Valegro? “I don’t want to compare her to Valegro,” she says. “Each horse is different. There are things she can do better than Valegro, there’s things he could do better than her. But it doesn’t make her less special. I’m lucky I had a horse like Valegro in my life, to achieve three Olympic gold medals. I don’t want to compare it. There is no point. It will be different.”